26 What is Pressbooks?
Pressbooks will be the primary tool used at Queen’s to create and edit new textbooks, and to adapt textbooks that have been gathered from other sources. Pressbooks is a web-based authoring tool based on the popular WordPress authoring platform. Working in Pressbooks is similar to working within WordPress or a Learning Management Systems such as Desire2Learn. Queen’s University Library is hosting an installation of Pressbooks, but you can also try out Pressbooks for free using their hosted service.
You can import a number of different file formats into Pressbooks for editing, including Word, ePub and HTML. Pressbooks will output the textbook as a mobile-friendly website, an ePub document (for use in e-readers), and a PDF (for printing).
To work within Pressbooks, the author requires an account to access the platform, which is set up by the Queen’s University Library. Individuals that support the author, such as the project manager and copy editors, will use an administrative account to access the author’s work as needed.
If you are a Queen’s community member and require a Pressbooks account, or need help importing an open textbook to adapt into Pressbooks at Queen’s please email rosarie.coughlan@queensu.ca.
BCcampus has also created some helpful Pressbooks tutorials.
For developers and technicians working in Pressbooks, here are some support communities,